The present invention generally relates to apparatus and a method for handling crop material such as hay, alfalfa and similar crops that are harvested throughout the world.
It has been common practice for decades that hay crop material is harvested by mowing and then raking the cut hay into strips of material known as windrows. More recently, the mowing and raking of hay is done with a single implement that combines these two activities in one operation.
The process of moving newly mown hay into a windrow and placing it on moist ground presents a problem of drying and curing the hay, particularly on the underside of the windrow. While the top side of the windrow may dry out in a relatively few hours, depending upon the weather, the underside often takes much more time to dry because air and sunlight does not reach this lower level of hay. It is a problem that is amplified with heavy hay, particularly if the windrow has gotten wet. In these conditions, the hay must be moved and the underside turned over to allow of the windrow to dry and cure.
In recent times, most of these moving and turning operations are performed by side delivery rakes that are used in the same way as those used to initially move the mowed hay into a windrow. While those rakes were considered to be advancements over what are known as dump rakes, such side delivery rakes have distinct disadvantages when they are used to invert as well as merge adjacent windrows into a single windrow. This is due to the fact that their operation tends to destroy the integrity and structure of the windrow as well as cause undesirable leaf loss of the hay plants.
It is highly desirable to efficiently and reliably invert windrows without destroying the integrity of the windrow which thereby minimizes the loss of leaves from the plants.